A central question in modern speciation research is how much of the classic genetic principles established from decades of research on lab organisms explain the speciation continuum in the wild. Rainforests harbor most of the terrestrial biodiversity globally, yet it is one of the least understood biomes for speciation research. Our work in the Forest Speciation Lab involves bushwhacking in the Sword Ferns and dancing with mist nets among the Douglas Firs to disentangle the genomic and behavioral basis of species boundaries in temperate and tropical rainforests of the Americas. Please join me on this "evergreen" time travel.